A data storage device, such as a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD), may maintain a virtual to physical (V2P) mapping table that maps physical block addresses (PBAs) assigned to the actual storage media to virtual block addresses (which may also be referred to as “logical block addresses” or “LBAs”). The data storage device may maintain the V2P mapping table so as to expose more static LBAs for use by an executing application or operating system. From the perspective of the executing application or operating system, the LBA assigned to data does not change (and hence is static). The data storage device may map the LBA to a PBA that changes during operation of the data storage device. SDDs may, for example, perform various types of maintenance (e.g., for purposes of wear leveling, garbage collection, etc.) that move data between PBAs. To account for the movement of data, the data storage device may change the association or mapping of the LBA to the new PBA.
The data storage device may store a copy of the V2P mapping table in a non-volatile memory array of the mass storage area of the data storage device for purposes of retention between power cycles. To enable more efficient access (in terms of access times), the data storage device may however load the V2P mapping table from the non-volatile memory to a volatile memory, such as dynamic random access memory (“DRAM”).